


To Fix This

by InnerSpectrum



Series: Mystrade is Our Division Prompts [50]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 20:03:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20179945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InnerSpectrum/pseuds/InnerSpectrum
Summary: Six months ago Greg Lestrade left his lover of eight years, Mycroft Holmes, to live in New York. In the world of not know what you've got until it's gone - three months ago Mycroft started writing him a letter every day in the slow hope of rebuilding the bridge he burned even though his letters have so far unanswered and somedays he wonders if he should continue...





	To Fix This

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Mystrade is our Division FB Fic Prompts | Fix
> 
> These last few one-shots have turned into something of a continuing story. While each can stand on its own, based on its prompt, if it fits, I will be reordering them around to fit the tale chronologically as needed. This mini series begins at Part 45 with ["Out of Time"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19886461) and continues through here.

Mycroft was working from his Diogenes office. On the television BBC news ran in the background. Most of the ‘headline stories’ was drivel he did not care about. Anything important he knew about or created. But he acknowledged that every now and then the goldfish of the world will do something that surprises even him and he wanted to know. At best it was one of the oh so many subroutines that ran in his mind.

Except for when he wrote his letters to his ex-lover. Then, he turned off the television and put his computer in sleep mode.

The attention had did not given Gregory then, the thing that made him his ex-lover, he gives now.

Mycroft gave all his attention to Gregory when he wrote. He put his laptop to sleep as well, pulled out his stationary and ink and looked at the blank sheet of paper.

_What to say to you today, my love? _

The hardest part was how to begin. Once begun it all flowed, but he had to get that initial sentence down first.

> _I don’t know what to say to you today my love._
> 
> _My love. Do I still have the right to call you this? I do not know. _
> 
> _Do you think of me as yours as still I think of you as mine though I know I have no right? I do not know. _
> 
> _I fervently hope for such. This hope is all that sustains me some days._
> 
> _Karma is a cruel mistress. _
> 
> _When we were still together you at least had hope I might extricate my cranium from my own rectal impactedness and come home to you eventually. At least you had until I stupidly destroyed it. Now, I serve her begrudgingly because I had no such hope when I woke at half three and reached for you out of habit, when for a moment I worried that you were out so late on a case and if I should call to check on you…_
> 
> _And then I remembered… _
> 
> _You are not here. _
> 
> _It was just me alone. In a silence of my own making._
> 
> _How do I fix this? _
> 
> _You know how I once loved the blessed silence of home._
> 
> _So much data always, always, always running through my mind. _
> 
> _Constantly. _
> 
> _It has been this way my entire life and yet the sudden peace of not hearing a sound from the outside once I step through the doors of our home and close them behind me remains such unexpected bliss. _
> 
> _And you showed me a new form of peace._
> 
> _The only sounds I could tolerate were that of the sounds of you. _
> 
> _How do I fix this, when I no longer have that?_
> 
> _I go to bed exhausted. It is the only way I can fall asleep now. _
> 
> _Still, I wake in foreboding silence no longer able to hear your soft breathing lulling me to sleep._
> 
> _How do I fix this, when I cannot put my arms around you to lull you to sleep?_
> 
> _In the mornings I strain to listen for the padding of your bare feet across the floor to the bath and then I remember. _
> 
> _How do I fix this, when I can’t hear it because you are not here?_
> 
> _The memory of you is all I have now in these walls. Memory and that one photo of us. You know the one._
> 
> _I found myself humming one of the punk rock songs you once hummed as you dressed in the mornings. _
> 
> _How do I fix this, when you are not here and the songs I cannot bear to hear, I find falling from my own lips? _
> 
> _My God this once blessed silence is deafening without you! _
> 
> _I oscillate between hoping that there is matchstick’s chance against an iceberg that you miss me just as profoundly, but I can never want you to hurt so then I find myself wanting you to be happy again. Even if that happiness is not with me. Even if it means that smile of yours lights another soul, because it means yours has found that light again and I do sincerely want that for you. _
> 
> _Yet I am also selfish and want to do everything possible to get back to being us happy together again. _
> 
> _You are not here._
> 
> _How I wish you were here._
> 
> _I miss you._
> 
> _I love you._

It took losing Gregory for him to learn that lesson but learned it he has. It took time to push Gregory away, Mycroft was willing to take the time to win him back.

Sherlock had put the idea of communicating with Gregory in his head three months ago. It was his own idea to choose writing a letter. Few people wrote actual letters when a phone call, an email, a text is easier, but nowadays, they are also easily forgettable. There was something substantial about a letter. It took effort and Mycroft wanted Gregory to understand that he knew Gregory was worth it.

Mycroft has written a letter daily since that first letter. He cannot seem to stop. He does not know what to say sometimes. Those are the letters where he would share an anecdote about work or his brother. Or simply tell his ex-love how much he misses him.

And he always ended each letter with _I love you_.

He knows Gregory has received them. The postal service is not the greatest between UK and the Stares, but not even they can waylay months of letters. Still, Greg has not responded to any and Mycroft does not know if Greg ever will. Some days, when Mycroft is in one of his morose moods, he will wonder if he’s wasting his time. That it is his own fault that Gregory is lost to him forever. Other days Mycroft is more resolute, until Gregory himself tells him to stop, he will continue.

Mycroft carefully waved the sheet of stationary ensuring the ink is dry before he arranged it into the prefect trifold to put in the preaddressed envelope and gave it to Anthea to be mailed before he turned the news back on and returned his attention back to work.

Anthea knocked on the office door before entering less than an hour later.

“Sir? The townhouse just had something delivered…”

For the townhouse to have something delivered as opposed to leaving it until he arrived home was noteworthy on its own, but it was the something in Anthea’s tone that caught his attention more.

It was a note of incredible surprise…

_And happiness? Why is she so… _

It was then he saw what she carried; envelopes. They were not business envelopes. The stationary was too refined, too personal…

_Oh…_

Though Anthea’s expression did not change, Mycroft knew she understood he had deduced it correctly when he turned the television off and put the computers to sleep again. She presented the envelopes balanced in both hands as one would an offering of something precious, which it was. Anthea said nothing else as she placed them in his waiting hands and left the room.

There nothing on the envelopes but Mycroft’s name, his home address, and the post mark. The home address to the townhouse that was once his ex-lover’s home as well as. Still, Mycroft recognized the boxy handwriting immediately. Mycroft knew by the ink that the Meisterstück Platinum-Coated Classique Ballpoint pen, given to Gregory from Mycroft as a birthday present, was used write them.

_Oh Gregory!_

His fingers ran lightly over the quality stationary. Mycroft knew Gregory purchased it just for this. Just for him.

It took three months.

After three months of daily writing Mycroft idly wondered which letter was the catalyst that caused Gregory to respond at last. He had no way of knowing and frankly did not care.

Mycroft retrieved his letter opened and carefully opened the envelope with the earliest postmark, letting the folded sheet inside fall into his hand.

Three months and ten days later Mycroft had Gregory's responses.

There was hardly anything written on the sheet, but Mycroft remembered his first letter to Gregory had exactly three words. Gregory had written eight; eight of the most incredible words that brought the first honest smile to Mycroft’s face in months.

> _“And God help me, I still love you.”_

Mycroft had no idea how much tension his body had held in potential dread of being asked by Gregory not to contact him ever again, until the relief from those eight words rushed out.

_He still loves me? He still loves me!_

With trembling hands, he opened the next letter.

> _“It is raining harshly today. It reminded me of that sudden downpour that happened with the one of the cases. Everything had happened in a back alley and the team and I had scrambled to get everything documented and packed before any potentially crucial evidence could be washed away. I somehow forgot my car was in the shop when I stayed behind to take one more look around before leaving. It realized too late that I was stranded. I was already drenched at that point and had resigned myself to walking the three blocks to a main thoroughfare to catch a cab. So I continued looking around. I was crouched looking at something on the ground that caught my eyes when the rain above me stopped. _
> 
> _You and your magical umbrella appeared out of nowhere and stood above me. You said nothing, just stood there and watched me do my job until I was ready to go and then you gave me a lift home. _
> 
> _After all, I had known that as someone close to your brother I had been somewhat under your surveillance for a while. Still, it was the first time you came to me like that. You did not have your PA send a minion. You did not send your PA. You came to me, personally. We said next to nothing beyond the necessary greetings and my words of appreciation for the ride. I realized then how comfortable we had become with each other, words were not needed to fill the void, because there was none between us by then. _
> 
> _We had yet to admit we liked each other yet, that was still months away, but that was the very first day I began to have the first inklings of hope on the real possibility of there being an *us* someday. _
> 
> _We were all of that and so much more and it was good. It was so good._
> 
> _Today’s sudden down pour here reminded of that. How I loved you then. _
> 
> _And God help me, I still love you.”_

It was not a pattern done intentionally by Mycroft when he wrote. He only realized it was in fact a pattern he himself had set as Gregory has followed it in kind the third letter.

> _“I don’t know how to forgive you. I don’t know how to forget you._
> 
> _I don’t know if I want to do the former, some day._
> 
> _I don’t know that I want to do the latter, ever._
> 
> _If you are a fool; a thrice damned fool, at that; what does that make me? _
> 
> _And God help me, I still love you.” _

When Anthea knocked on the door and peeked her head in some time later Mycroft still sat at his desk. The telly was still turned off and his computers still asleep. The letters still in his hands.

He understood that inkling of hope Gregory wrote of.

For the very first time since he watched his heart fly away to New York City Mycroft six months he ago felt the first fluttering of hope.

_Oh love, will I be able to fix this someday after all?_  
  


  
Art by Haha (found in MeWe - too perfect not to share.)


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